It´s my understanding that USPS is in the shape it´s currently in - because of Congress. Story goes...that early last decade, Congress decided for some reason - that of all the ´quasi-governmental agencies´, USPS alone would henceforth be required to *pre-fund* it´s ´retirement account´...

So in one fell swoop - Congress turned an agency which wasn´t underwater - in to the poster child for the submarine corps.

Ain´t government magnificent in it´s competence?

Congress is bound and determined to ruin everything it touches! It seems like it´s so in bed with the postal unions that it can´t even implement smart and essential cost-saving ideas. Everything that´s wrong with this country is essentially caused by 535 human beings in Washington DC that don´t know up from down and are corrupt to the core!

Seriously, 1 day per week is more than enough. Everything important comes from UPS and FedEx or email.

The Post Office could make up their deficit in short order if they simply charged 10% of the value of each money order they sell. They would lose a bit money orders of $10 or under, but the vast majority of money orders are for far more than that. Go to most post offices on the first of any month and see the thousands of dollars worth of money orders being sold for about a dollar each. If people don´t want bank accounts let them help the post office.

Given the prices people are willing to pay for most other daily essentials, why not
have realistic pricing for the mail?

When gasoline is over three dollars per gallon (and some place over four dollars)
why doesn´t the USPS charge what is required to make money (or break even)?
I´ve seen gas stations change the price of gas multiple times in one day.
Yet we have an idiotic commission determining that postal rates cannot rise.

Use round numbers for first class postage fees.
Charge fifty cents to deliver a letter.
Use zone rates for remote places like Alaska and Hawaii.
You could pay a dollar for first class to the 49th and 50th states.

United Parcel has zones for all its deliveries. This is just common sense,
and widespread common practice throughout the industry. Wise up.

We had family living in Canada, and service to there was so slow, taking about six or more days from the U.S. While not advocating being as lame as the Loonies
to the north of us, if delivery took 3-4 days for coast to coast, and you could pay a little extra for two-day delivery by Priority Mail, how does anyone suffer?

Long past due for the Postal Service to get real. Or just put it back into Gummint and fund it as it once was, from tax dollars. But this endless problem-wrangling is
very symptomatic of Gummint idiocy.
A nation unable to solve its own problems.

Charge all those illegal aliens for the money they are sending out of the country.

Get rid of Saturday deliveries - I mostly get junk on Saturdays anyway.

My Hispanic postman snarkily told me a month ago that Congress "will protect us, just wait and see, we are untouchable."

Congress proves once again that the majority of them have no concept of business or how to run a business. To tell the USPS to run like a business but then control it´s prices and tell it when it must be open it idiotic. That is not letting it run like a business. One day less of mail delivery is nothing. Many rural counties only get three days of mail delivery a week and they are doing fine. Congress is made up of idiots, and that insults idiots.

It would be fine with me if we got mail two or three days a week / or alternate three days one week - two days the next

Privatize and downsize. Ban the unions and have a SERIOUS update of their retirement and healthcare plans. Have Monday, Wednesday, and Friday normal deliveries. Seven days a week "special" delivery. There, how´s that?

Despicable

Look for the union label...

I was hoping that they would close on Saturdays, we don`t need them six days a week. The USPS business area is only open from 8-12 pm on Sat`s here in my area, why not close the whole day.
One post office in another tiny place-close by-is closed every day for lunch from 12-1pm. These big expensive buildings are not needed in a lot of places down here in the Rural South we still have mail routes with real road side ,mail boxes.

Perfect example of why Congress is the opposite of progress.

Congress tells USPS to keep losing $$$ and we tax payers will pick up the tab.

The Post Office is not run as a business. Time and motion studies are outlawed. They want to employ lots and lots of people....many who do little. The union dues grease the campaigns of the politicians who support them. Its an incestuous situation. The fix is in and the public is skewered into paying!

Sooo many of our fiscal problems could be rectified by using common sense, and since that´s not in the offing, I see no way we can survive -- unless of course, this is just an example and not a dictum carved in granite.

They sit on their thrones and dictate, without a clue of basic economics. If these people are in charge of our future, BEND OVER!

Yea, but they can´t find out why DHS has purchased billions of rounds of ammo and hundreds of armored vehicles.